Requiem
by mountainman91
Summary: What is love? What does it drive us to? Read and find out. Oneshot. T for character death. Review, please.


Requiem

The bushes reached up with gray-barked, wiry hands. Clawing his legs, the bare skin of his forearms, his face. He crashed through them, jaw clenched firmly, his spear held low. Elly must live. Speed was his only ally now.

They were still rolling out of their sleeping bags when he broke through the sheltering scrub oak. Three of them. Strong, bronzed Careers, their handsome faces masks of shock and bewildered surprise. A guttural howl broke from somewhere deep in his chest as he charged them, feet pounding up clumps of wet earth. The first barely had time to grab his sword before the razor spearpoint found his heart. Twist the point out, the crimson painting his face with sickly warmth. The metallic tang of death. Bring the glistening edge of the spearpoint to bear on the next tribute as he pulled his arm back to throw his trident. Right where neck and shoulder met. The boy screamed, twitching as he sank down.

Pain, sharp and stabbing in his side. The bugger had got behind him. He thrust backwards with the spearshaft, twisting with hips and shoulders and planted feet. A sickly crunch. Silence. He dropped the spear, not daring to look back at the weeping ruin behind him. Three cannons sounded in rapid succession. He walked out of the clearing, clutching his side. The cut was shallow, but it still bled profusely.

Where had he left Elly? He blinked, trying in vain to clear the fog from his mind. Dark and terrible thoughts. Whirling vortex of deadly emotion. He caught a glimmer of gold between the black and spreading branches of the scrub oak. There. He trotted towards it, his jaw clenched in determination, long legs eating the distance with impunity.

The girl who lay at the mouth of the Cornucopia had been very beautiful once. Auburn hair fell in waves from a high forehead. Pale and freckled skin. Soft, delicate hands and toes, perfectly formed. The kind of girl who belonged in ruffled spring dresses and green velvet evening gowns. A beauty badly marred. Her slender legs sprawled in front of her at disintegrated angles. Hastily and inexpertly splinted. Trenchant wounds, the fine tracery of a sadist's blade, crisscrossed her bared arms and neck and face. He had tried to bandage them, but every move she made opened the wounds afresh. Blood speckled the garishly green grass around her. A battle dew. A death dew. Oh God, was she dead?

"Elly, Elly, listen to me."

Her eyelids fluttered open. His image reflected in the pale sunlight refracting from her green irises. Eyes that a man could become lost it. She tried to smile, stopped. The pain was unbearable. He could see it in her eyes. The listless way she tried to raise one butchered arm. He smiled for the both of them.

"Elly, the Careers are gone. I finished them off."

Blood seeped anew as Elly struggled to brush his cheek with ruined fingers.

"B-brave Jos-Joshua..." the living ruin spoke in a gasping whisper. Then a moment, a flitting gesture at the wreck of her own body. "End...end this."

Joshua sobbed, a harsh gasping sound. Tears poured out of his ducts like water from a ruptured dam. "I will, Elly, I will make it all go away." He tucked a stray wisp of hair behind her ear. "Go to sleep now. It will all go away."

Elly sighed and closed her eyes. How very like a child she looked there, resigned and trusting. Trusting him to do the right thing. He would do the right thing.

The dirk was sharp beyond sharp. He had seen to that. Needle pointed, double edged to steal life as gently as sleep steals wakefulness. He unsheathed it from the scabbard at his belt, kneeling over Elly. Beautiful, trusting, loving Elly. Her porcelain skin cut to ribbons. He hadn't even seen the vixen who had done it. She had died at the hands of the careers instead of at his spearpoint. A fact he bitterly regretted.

Up through the armpit and into the heart. The simplest, most painless way to kill. He planted a final kiss on her blood encrusted forehead. It would soon be over. His knuckles whitened on the handle. Guide the blade. Will and body as one.

He gasped low and soft as the dagger tip pierced the soft flesh beneath his arm. Something warm and liquid trickled down his side. Blood. He willed himself to push harder, his left hand braced on the pommel at a peculiar angle. Gritted his teeth to keep from screaming. This was too slow. This wasn't how it was supposed to be.

He pushed harder, and felt the whole left side of his body suddenly go slack. Push. His knee buckled, and collapsed into Elly's lap. Twist upward to see the sky. He was a son of the woodlands, and damned if he would die out of sight of the trees. There. He could feel the cold tip of the knife in his flesh. Deep. But not quite deep enough. Still a little more to go. His left arm now hung limp and senseless. He hooked his fingers on the wet and slippery crossguard of the knife, drawing the alien thing further into his body. Yet deeper. The world went gray. And cold. So cold.

Fiery pain. He could feel his heart pump wildly and erratically as the keen tip pierced it like a skewer. With a final grunt of effort, he pushed it further in. Felt his pulse slow, felt the warm trickle down his side redouble in volume.

The oak at the end of the field was probably the most beautiful part of the arena. Its spreading branches reminded him of a crown. It was a crown. The crown of the king of the forest. So Dad had told him. He smiled at the memory. When you're seven, you'll believe anything your parents tell you, gobbledygook or not.

Not just a crown. Hands...hands reaching to the sky. Why would they reach...what was up there? Could it be that Dad was right? Would he meet Elly again? Could it be? Maybe the teacher had lied...had... Darkness crept across his field of vision, then sweet unconsciousness as his body systematically shut down.

Final cannon.


End file.
